Health

The Strangest Things Medical Professionals Ever Saw

9. The tragedy of gun violence for medical professionals. “By now, I’ve become accustomed to the sight/sound/smell of almost anything. So, the things that get to… Trista - June 7, 2021

If you’ve ever been interested in learning more about the crazy things doctors, nurses, and medical professionals see daily, you’re in for a treat. As a popular topic on Reddit, Doctors from around the world are opening up and telling their stories about the strangest things they ever saw in their profession. Some of these stories are funny, while others are horrifying. Medical professionals go through a lot in their chosen profession. Dealing with crazy occurrences every day can take its toll on anyone. Doctors and nurses deserve plenty of praise for everything they go through while ensuring our safety.

Medical professionals help us through illnesses, heal our wounds, and offer an ear when we’re having mental health concerns. Can you imagine some of the things they witness daily? Every day is different in their line of work. Most of us will never understand what they go through while helping to save lives. If you have any interest in the medical profession, going through this list may help you decide if it’s the right profession for you. Keep reading to find out all of the gory and sometimes funny details about the strangest things medical professionals ever saw while on the job. And if you think these stories are crazy, wait until you read what made these dedicated healthcare professionals quit!

30. When experimenting in the bedroom goes wrong.

“I’m an emergency room nurse with an interesting story. Now, picture a young kid. He was no more than 21 at most. A few signs were leading me to believe something bad was going on. He requested a male nurse, which was bad sign number one. He also didn’t want to sit down. I was suddenly very aware of what he’s about to tell me. He and his girlfriend {insert skepticism here} got experimental for what he assured me was his first time. He now had a 10-inch neon pink vibrator up his bum. It was still on and causing him some distress.

I tried my level best to maintain a professional demeanor. I’d say I was marginally successful. It was difficult not to laugh. I enjoy my work wholeheartedly, but this was something I had never seen before. He went to surgery to remove it because we couldn’t get it out in the ER. He somehow got it wedged so that it was up against his coccyx and pushing up toward his belly button. PSA: if you are going to enjoy what some might call exotic pleasures, make sure there is a string attached. Sometimes things get stuck. Then you end up in the ER more embarrassed than you ever thought possible.”- whyspir

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29. A medical professional saw an untreated UTI turn into blindness and a mental breakdown.

“When I was an undergrad, I did some observation in an assisted living facility with a physical therapist. The most intriguing patient I had was a woman around the age of 70 who came in for sudden blindness. It turns out she had a UTI that got so out of control it turned into a kidney infection and led to acute delirium. In addition to that, her blood pressure spiked randomly so high that it affected her glaucoma, causing her to go completely blind overnight. The combination of sudden blindness and delirium caused her terrifying hallucinations. She kept seeing gigantic monsters at night in her bedroom as well as the dead bodies of her grandchildren which were still living.

Over the three weeks, I saw her. It went from her saying things like, ‘I know I’m out of it… I just see things that seem so real’ to walk into her room to find her having full conversations with multiple family members at a dinner table with side comments and all, when there was nobody in the room. She introduced us to all the people she was hallucinating. I’ve never seen a more heartbreaking patient in my life. Three weeks before she came in, she was living alone and waiting tables full time. By the end, she was completely out of touch with reality and had to move to a nursing home for full-time care.” – flameprincess_

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28. A disgruntled patient pees on the floor.

“I’m an emergency room nurse and have a crazy story for all of you. I had a guy in the Emergency Department who kept peeing in the corner of his room. He was told several times to let us know if he needed to go. We would have happily helped him to the bathroom. He said he was going to keep doing it. The guy was angry that we wouldn’t let him go home. He said he planned to tell everyone I was the one peeing in his room so I would be fired. And he told everyone, but I didn’t even get to go home.

Nurses and doctors in the Emergency Room have surely seen it all, but this case of a disgruntled patient takes the cake. He decided it was a good idea to relieve his bladder in his room and that it would surely cause his nurse to be fired. That wasn’t the case, as everyone knew it was him doing it. The nurse doesn’t mention why he was in the emergency room, but whatever the case, this surely wasn’t the way to handle the situation. He should have let them treat him and be released after it was safe. Doctors don’t keep you in the hospital just because.” – heebit_the_jeeb

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27. Bats are everywhere, so grab your gas mask.

“Former ED nurse here. A few years back, a lady came in concerned that she’d bumped her head, and it was just after Liam Neeson’s wife died in a skiing accident, so she was scared she’d have the same thing. She insisted that we had to get her taken care of in an hour before her husband got home. He’d told her already that she was overreacting, and she didn’t need to get checked out. So, she had to trick him into driving the next town over to check on their college-age daughter. (Apparently, the lady convinced her to help out with the trick), so she could sneak out to the Emergency Room.

Now here’s the best part. The whole time I’m getting her story, her medical history, vital signs, etc., she’s got a gas mask hanging around her neck. Like, a WWII kind of deal, a really big and bulky full-face gas mask. So, finally, I ask her, what’s with the mask? And she says, ‘it’s because of the bats!’ Then I get the story of how her attic is infested with bats. And she says it’s against the law to kill them. (I don’t know if that’s true, maybe it is). So she put out mothballs all over the house to drive out the bats. But, the smell is so strong she has to wear a gas mask. It’s so bad she has to sleep at a friend’s house. She was okay, though. Her husband came and took her home.” – Redacted

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26. Delusions are real, especially for this young lady.

“ER doctor here, here’s a weird one. A patient came into the ER one night saying she was infected with worms. She told me she had been noticing worms in her mouth and her urine and stool. She said it had been happening for a few months, and it was worsening. The lady brought a sample of these worms. She brought them in a glass, covered with saran wrap. As I was trying to convince her that it was just normal spit, her parents arrived. They had driven down from out of state in a panic that their daughter was dying of a parasitic infection. Mom and Dad were livid with me when I suggested that it was in her head. They couldn’t accept the fact that her daughter was crazy.

They asked for a GI consult so someone could look into her infection. So I opened up the glass, and with a gloved hand, I pulled out the “worms.” I ran it around in my fingers and showed them. The Dad’s reaction was something to behold. It went from ‘don’t be ridiculous, she’s sick’ to ‘what the heck are you doing?’ to’wait for a second, that looks like just spit’ to ‘holy crap, my daughter is freaking crazy.’ I saw it in Dad’s face, and then he turned to his wife and said, ‘honey, I think we need to talk.’ I left the room, and they took her home 15 minutes later. I offered a psychiatric eval, but they said that they would go to her mother’s psychiatrist.” – Smeeee

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25. Treating a mobster, who offers to wack your husband.

“I once had a patient who was a legit gangster with the name and all. (For HIPAA, I won’t post his name, but pick any over-the-top mobster name like Jimmy, the ape). He came in because he got in a fight with another gangster who shot his toe-off. Instead of coming to the doctor, the patient attempted to ‘treat’ his wound by himself. Surprise, surprise, it got severely infected, and he had to come in for it to be debrided and treated with antibiotics. He saw my wedding ring and asked, ‘oh, you’re married? Does your husband have life insurance? I can work something out…’

So, I believe that was supposed to be flirty, but it was just the strangest thing. I proceeded to treat his wound and released him but not before he double-checked the answer to his previous questions. It was one of the scarier encounters I’ve had in the emergency room. I’ve seen it all, but that one took the cake. I’m hoping I don’t see him again. I told my husband about it later that evening, and he was just in shock that a patient would ask those sorts of questions. I later came to realize he was talking about murder-for-hire.” – eshol02

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24. Medical professionals really had to pretend like V8 juice is blood.

“I work as a phlebotomist at a hospital with a psych unit. I’ve had the pleasure of running into some pretty interesting individuals. The best was this one patient who refused to have his blood drawn unless I brought him blood to replenish the sample I had taken. So with the help of the nursing staff, we gave him V-8, warmed it up, and told him that it was fresh O+ blood. He let me draw his blood and still gave me crap about how the devil could see what I was doing and how he knew I was going to hell.

When we gave him the V-8, he acted like it was bringing parts of him back to life. He acted as if it was real blood, and we decided to just let him believe it. In situations like that, creativity is sometimes better than restraining someone. If we had to restrain him, it could have caused more of an outburst and led to a dangerous situation. I’m just glad we were able to do our work without any physical altercations. I get called every name in the book regularly at work, so that doesn’t faze me.” – Crenshawca85

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23. A broken bone didn’t stop this athlete.

“Football season had just started, which meant we would be getting a lot of players into the ER for the next couple of months. One night an 18-year-old male comes in by ambulance with an open fracture in his tibia. We only had him in the main ER for about 15 minutes before he went up to surgery, but he sure was a talker. I went in there to get some information from him so we could admit him, and this is where it got funny (he was on a lot of pain medication, the good stuff, lol).

I walked in (25 yo F), and he immediately stopped talking and just stared at me. He then asked me what I was doing later after work. Meanwhile, his Dad is laughing hysterically, and his mother was yelling at him to be quiet. Then he asked me if I would want to rent a ‘Redbox’ movie and watch it later at his house because his parents go to bed early and we could have the couch all to ourselves. His Dad could not stop laughing, and his mom looked madder than heck… All in all, the guy has a broken bone sticking out of his leg, and he is still trying to hit on a girl.” –SophieTroph

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22. Drinking hand sanitizer to get drunk.

“I’m an Emergency Room, Registered Nurse. One day, a Homeless man with a history of alcohol abuse arrives intoxicated. His Blood EtOH ( Level of alcohol in the blood) doubled within 2 hours, despite being isolated in his room and having been thoroughly searched for alcohol containers. No one can figure out where this guy is getting the booze from. A resident decides to check the multi-hospital system to try and get more info on the guy and sees an old note from another hospital mentioning having to remove the alcohol hand sanitizer dispensers from the patient’s room. We go into the patient’s room and see a hand sanitizer dispenser on the wall.

Upon closer inspection, it’s been visibly tampered with and empty. I decided to ask him about it, and he stated that he needed a drink, and that was his only option. I explained that hand sanitizer is not meant for that purpose, but it went in one ear and out the other. He just wouldn’t stop no matter what we did. I found him a few hours later drinking the sanitizer out of a hallway sanitizer station. I’ll never understand how someone can harm their body just for a fix. The poor man was eventually released after removing every hand sanitizer station within his vicinity to allow him to sober up.” – Pedantic_Romantic

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21. A medical professional is impressed by a talented man with schizophrenia.

“I work in a mental health facility. The weirdest kid we’ve had was this polite, quiet kid who would stay awake for days making these figurines out of toilet paper, soap, basically whatever he could find in his room. He was maybe 21 years old. However, would also smear soap all over the mirror and window in his room. He refused to wear clothes, so only the male staff (pun) could handle him (more pun). This guy talked in this quiet voice about religion, that dragons were coming alive, that the walls were moving, and that the other patients could read his mind.

One day, after agreeing to wear clothes, he went into the common room. There was this piano there. At this point, he had been there for three months, and everybody on staff liked him and was rooting for him to have a breakthrough. Now, he went over to the piano, stared at it for a while, and then sat down. Then he proceeded to just magically play the thing for hours. He was extremely talented. A couple of weeks later, he had a breakthrough, possibly because of the piano playing, and he was sent to this juvenile schizophrenics center, which is way more relaxed than the supermax I worked at. What a nice kid.” – DarkPasta

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20. Smoking with teenagers was a bad idea for this lady.

“I work in the Emergency Room, and one day, we had a 54-year old psychiatric patient come in. She ran away from her care home without pants on. She was hanging out with some local teenagers who were smoking. The smoke made her start hearing voices, so naturally, chest pain ensued. She was afraid to step into the ambulance and stare at the light, talking about how hot she was for 20 minutes to the hospital. She was easily 300 lbs with a face covered in dried spaghetti or something. It then took half an hour to convince her to step out of the ambulance because she was afraid it was going to hurt.

Now once out of the ambulance, she proceeded to insert her fingers into her anus. She then proceeded to pull them out and lick them. Rinse and repeat. It took us ten more minutes to convince her it was safe to enter the hospital. She was thoroughly convinced it would hurt to go into the hospital. This poor woman’s delusions were keeping her from getting some much-needed help. Once we got her into triage, she calmed down, and we were able to safely get her back into her care home with the help of staff she recognized. I hope they can keep her in the care facility without any further issues.” – TheCanadianteabag

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19. Drinking the magic juice.

“I used to be a psych tech (CNA) during nursing school. Every patient I encountered was ‘Weird,’ but the one that stands out to me the most was a female with schizophrenia. She would pee on our unit, literally anywhere. She would come running out of her room butt naked, pop a squat, and drain the main vein in the middle of the hallway with everyone watching. Same patient-another day, she turned her call light on, so I went to check on her. I walked in to find her in the bathroom with urine in a cup. She called it her ‘magic juice’ and proceeded to drink it.

I felt for that woman. She couldn’t help herself, and the psychiatric center kept her safe from harming herself or others. I have many stories to tell of ‘weird patients.’ Psych patients amaze me. I loved working in this field but sadly left due to the pandemic. My health and state of mind are more important than having a job, at least for the moment. If I had to choose a path to follow, I would go back to the psychiatric center before choosing something else. Every day is interesting, and I was never bored or tired of my job when working there.” – Redacted name of user

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18. A fake cancer patient gets busted by this medical professional.

“I work in my local hospital. We once had a fake cancer patient. The patient would go around claiming he had pancreatic cancer and blood clots all over his body. He also claimed that he had a rare genetic disorder that made him resistant to coumadin. He would come with stacks of medical records. The guy had me convinced. He went as far as getting a chemo port surgically implanted in his chest. He did, however, trip my radar for crazy, and I googled him. I found a plethora of information and brought up an article about how he scammed many hospitals and even convinced physicians to give him chemo.

This medical professional wasn’t fooled by a patient. He figured out the patient was lying the entire time after finding a news article about him. It makes you wonder why people do things like this? Was he doing it for attention, or did he have some kind of medical condition that made him go that far with a lie? I guess we’ll never know. But I hope the man was treated accordingly for the reasoning behind his lie instead of tossed to the curb or asked to leave the hospital. Now, I understand why doctors ask so many questions during medical exams.” –freedomfrommyself

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17. A Barbie doll in the wrong place.

“I don’t know if I’m allowed to answer as I only just finished my third year in medical school (We started clinical rotations) but, we did have a few very interesting cases in our rotations. The first was the usual ‘I fell on something’ – anal penetration gone the wrong case, except it was a Barbie doll… So that was kind of amusing. Number two that stands out was an infected genital modification. It was swollen like grapefruit and discharging something awful. I don’t know how it got like that, but I’m guessing there was shame involved. We had our attending supervise a removal and IV antibiotics for that one.

The smell was almost unbearable. The patient healed, but it’s certainly something I’ll never forget. Well, that was something I probably won’t be able to top for a few years. We also had a pain seeker who insisted she was a member of the band One Direction. She claimed she needed narcotics to make the screaming girls go away. That was creative on her part. There was nothing wrong with this woman other than the fact she made up lies and strange stories to get narcotics. I’m still early on in my career, so I’m sure I’ll have a lot more interesting stories as the years go by.” – shutyourfcknface

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16. This is why medical education is extremely important.

“I’m a receptionist at a doctors’ clinic. During my second week, a very distressed guy approached the counter and told me in a whisper that he had just found out his housemate was homosexual and that he needed to see a doctor right away to get the ‘appropriate tests’ done. He said that he’d moved out already but was worried because he’d used the same cutlery and light switches as his housemate. I don’t know what he thought he’d caught, but I was speechless! I squeezed him in with the most scathing, sarcastic doctor. And I hope they were able to explain things to him.

It’s important to educate yourself when it comes to all aspects of your health. This man wholeheartedly believed he would get an STD or HIV just from sharing a house with his homosexual roommate. It’s sad to think he didn’t have the proper education and lost a possible friendship because of his lack of knowledge in those areas. Just to be clear, you can’t get an STD from just sharing a home with someone. In any case, his sexual orientation shouldn’t have mattered, and this man should apologize to his former roommate. He certainly didn’t deserve that kind of treatment.” – dirtsworth

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15. An ambulance ride to McDonald’s?

“I’m an EMT. We picked up a guy from a local McDonald’s. The guy had tripped and lacerated his arm on a parking block, bleeding everywhere. The thing was, he was hardcore tripping on some sort of hallucinogen. The patient didn’t take kindly to my partner, so I treated him. The whole time I was being verbally/sexually harassed while trying my best to keep a bandage on the guy’s arm. Normally I would NOT put up with that crap, but this time I couldn’t stop laughing because the guy was talking in a squeaky Mickey-Mouse-type voice. It was Hilarious.

The cop I grabbed to go along. (I’m a rather petite chick EMT and was not risking it alone with a 300 lb crazy guy). And he nearly peed himself laughing. The guy continued to harass me to the hospital, even after the police officer told him to back off. Once there, we handed him over to the hospital staff and warned them he was under the influence. It was unprofessional to laugh at him, but I just couldn’t help myself. I hope he was able to get the laceration handled, and hopefully, he will think twice about taking drugs after such an eventful trip to the hospital.” – Redacted name of user

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14. It wasn’t a heart attack…

“One night, dispatch comes in for a male patient suffering a heart attack. We head out with an ambulance and an engine (firefighters are great at lifting heavy things) and arrive a few minutes later. It’s a nice-looking house in a good part of town, so we head through the door and what we see in no way matches the expectations. There are two very fat, very hairy, very naked men lying on the floor. One keeps saying, ‘my brother! My brother is having a heart attack!’ so we get to work on the other unconscious male. We put some leads on him and check the monitor — normal heart rhythm—no signs of a heart attack.

It was about that time we noticed the many empty bottles of alcohol and crack pipes. The unconscious male awakens from his slumber, angrily believing that we are trying to kill him. According to the tapes, it took about three minutes from our distress call over the radio until every cop in the county showed up at that doorstep. It felt like forever, trying to keep two sumo wrestler-sized men from killing us. But the police did arrive, and everyone had an uneventful trip to the hospital. Thanks to the armed police officer sitting with us in the back of the rig.” – foghorn5950

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13. Harassment is not okay for medical professionals — or anyone.

“I am a Cardiology Technologist, though I have had many very odd situations. One of the worst is this little elderly man I see for yearly follow-ups. He always arrives wearing a Hawaiian – style button-up and oversized rice hat. The guy has Nazi tattoos and is not ashamed to show or talk about it – he is very proud of it. He also likes to be very overly flirty and touchy. He has been physical with coworkers. This gentleman has a pick-up line he uses on me (my name is Kat). “Do people ever call you kit kat? Because you’re sweet as chocolate.”

Needless to say, his chart has been flagged. My boss deals with him now and likes to pick him apart on his Nazi views even though it is professionally wrong. I refuse to be harassed, so I decided to just stay away from him and let my boss handle his appointments after dealing with years of harassment. I’ll never understand why people believe that kind of behavior is appropriate, especially with women. Also, why would he be proud of such atrocities and show off those tattoos? Whenever he comes in, I act like I need to see another patient just to get away from him.” – DuskAndSummer

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12. Delirium changes people.

“Hi there! I’m a Registered Nurse. I had a patient whom I was sitting for (one on one care for patients with safety risks). He was an older man that was delirious after surgery. He constantly tried to get up out of bed, which is why I had to sit in the room and watch him. At one point, I was taking his vital signs, and he began staring at my nametag very intently. There was silence for a moment, and then he looked at me with the brightest of eyes (though he seemed to be staring off into space and not looking at anything).

He began to sing,’Bum ba dum bum! [insert my full name hereeeeeeeeeee] What a loveeeely nammmeeee!”‘ Then, thirty minutes later, I knocked over his call light, and he screamed ‘YOU B****’ at me aggressively. His delirious state caused an aggressive reaction, and I suddenly felt extremely uncomfortable in the room with him. I was glad when I was relieved after my shift by the next nurse in rotation. I hope she didn’t have the same problems with him that I had to deal with. Even the nicest patients can snap and leave you feeling uncomfortable. I have tons of stories I could tell you.” – cittacitta

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11. Something terrible happens everyday.

“I have multiple stories, but I will share the one that shook me up the most. So, I was a radiographer at a trauma center for a few years. I had to report to the trauma bay whenever a trauma alert was called. Each trauma alert would have a short description of what we were getting. TRAUMA ALERT: PEDIATRIC BURN. This was the second burn that I was going to see. The first one I had seen was a man that had mildly burned himself with a turkey fryer. This burn was terrifying. It was a 14-year-old girl that had gotten into a fight with three other girls over a boy.

The three girls had gotten upset at the 14-year-old girl, held her down in the middle of the road, and set her on fire. Meanwhile, I’m waiting for this patient with a trauma doctor and several nurses. I had no idea what to say. I had only been doing this kind of work for a year or so. She passed away a few minutes later. That night, when I got home from work, I went into my one-year-old’s room and woke him up to hug him and love him. My wife came in asking what was going on, and I just told her that I needed this.’ – Redacted name of user

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10. Veterinary has to deliver stillborn.

“Does veterinary medicine count? While on my large animal rotation, we had a cow come in that hadn’t normally been acting. About a week ago, they pulled a calf from her and thought that was the end of it. It wasn’t. They hadn’t checked, and a dead calf remained in her, which had been macerating and autolyzing in the uterus. When she came to the hospital, we put her on the tilt table and adjusted it so that she was on her back. I clipped her abdomen, and as I was scrubbing it, the foulest smelling fluid would squirt out of her v******.

The surgeon exteriorized the uterus (which was enormous), and as he cut into it, a huge wave of fluid, bones, and clumps of hair poured out of it towards us. The smell was so bad it took all I could not vomit. I then had to run over and collect the bones and hair clumps so they wouldn’t get stuck in the machinery and damage it. The entire hospital (which is huge, mind you) stunk afterward. It was by far the most disgusting experience of my life. I see some crazy things daily, but this was the worst.” – elapsedecho

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9. The tragedy of gun violence for medical professionals.

“By now, I’ve become accustomed to the sight/sound/smell of almost anything. So, the things that get to me are the emotionally difficult cases. My worst: One of the first few times I was in the ER, there was a large gang-related shooting. Among the people to come in was a 7-month pregnant woman who had been standing in the crowd that got sprayed with bullets. She was shot in the back and side of her abdomen. She was bleeding internally on a massive scale. After liters and liters of saline and lots of blood, the decision was made to take the child out.

So, the OBs rushed down to the ER from upstairs. As they were doing their thing, the massive hemorrhage became overwhelming, and emergency procedures were initiated. These are brutal. In this case, it involved cracking open the thoracic cavity in an attempt to manually beat the heart by hand. A few minutes later, she was gone. Later, I found out that the baby was affected by sickle cell anemia and that there was no one else to take custody of the child, so it went to foster care. I rarely cry, but this was one of those times. Compartilization is important in this line of work.” – The_Literal_Doctor

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8. A guy, a girl, and a one-legged man walk into a bar… but they end up at the ER.

“I don’t like telling the worst on my category of ‘f***** up.’ I’ll stick to ‘f***** up but funny.’ I was suturing the arm of a guy who said his Bi*ch bit him. Then a female patient was brought in (her head was cut), and the guy points and yells: ‘THAT bi*ch!’ Also, a one-legged man (bruises) and a woman (shot in the leg) were brought to the ER. When I asked the usual ‘how did you get hurt?’ the woman begins: We were in a bar, and I said, ‘hey one-legged guy, pass me the salt. So the one-legged guy got angry because I called him one-legged, and he shot me!.’

Then the guy continues:’Who the f*ck shoots a woman? Right? You just don’t shoot a woman!’ My colleague and I looked at each other, completely puzzled, trying to figure out: 1) why the heck did the guy shoot if he thinks that way? 2) Why did the woman come to the ER with him? And more importantly, 3) is he still armed? We were about to call security when we finally understood. There was another one-legged man at the bar, who shot the woman after being called one-legged; then the present one-legged man, who happens to be the woman’s significant other, shot the guy to teach him not to shoot women.” – DocInternetz

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7. A strange noise baffles medical students.

“I’m a medicine resident. As a med student, I was working on Trauma surgery, and a guy comes in with a gunshot wound to his buttock. He came in through the side entrance with a bloody wound, but it looked pretty superficial. So after cleaning it up, we decide to use a VAC dressing to help it heal. VACs are sponges covered in plastic, which you put over the wound, then hook up to suction to help the healing. It only works with a good seal. We spend forever sealing up the sponge, then turn on the suction, but it doesn’t work.

All we heard was this weird whistling noise. We start checking the seal and the tubing, trying to find the leak. Finally, one of my colleagues says, ‘Guys, I figured it out.’ He sticks his finger in the patient’s bum, and the whistling stops. The bullet must have nicked the rectum, which we hadn’t seen until then. As an internal injury, the poor guy ended up with a much bigger surgery to repair his rectum. I’m sure there are other stories I could tell, but this is the one that I’ll remember forever compared to everything else I see every day.” – TheBear83

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6. What are those burns?

“I thought of another one! This teenage boy came in with a split philtrum up to his nose. The philtrum is the indent above the upper lip. He was in a lot of pain, and we were waiting to hear how this happened. As it turns out, he was riding a four-wheeler without a helmet and smacked into a tree. We noticed he had on a hospital gown from another hospital and asked what happened. So, it turns out he was at another hospital, got mad at the wait time, then his Dad drove him here where he thought the wait time would be shorter.

Now here is the funny part. The gown he was wearing had four or five little holes in it. We decided not to ask but were able to figure out what happened. They were cigarette burns. He put a cigarette in his mouth while they drove to our hospital. You can normally hold a cigarette in your mouth, but since his philtrum was split, it couldn’t support it. The cigarette fell out of his mouth and burned his gown each time he tried to put it back in his mouth. The situation got a good chuckle out of everyone, including the patient and his Dad.” – Redacted name of user

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5. Freak accidents always lead to the ER and medical attention.

“My mother is an RN and has a high tolerance for all things nasty, so she would always end up treating the patients that no one else wanted. Here are a few of the stories she told me. A man was driving behind a truck with glass panels strapped to the back of it. Somehow, one of the glass panels managed to fall off the truck and shoot straight through the guy’s windshield, slicing a huge part of his face off. The saddest part was that he was engaged to be married in a couple of weeks. He suffered from pretty severe brain damage and was never the same. They still got married, though.

Here’s another one. A woman was changing a tire on the side of a road when a truck passed her. She was wearing a scarf, and it got stuck in the wheel of the truck. She was dragged 60 feet on her back before she was able to free herself. There was no skin on her back, only muscle. My mom was the only one who could change her dressings without getting nauseous. Also, she was pregnant at the time. She made a full recovery, though, and her baby was fine. My Mother was happy to help this woman recover and meet her baby after she was born.” – mxeyr

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4. A tough dad with a crazy scar.

“I have a story along the same lines, but it’s not medically oriented. My father is an old school hard a**. He is Hard-drinking, hard-hitting, strong as a bull type. If you imagine Clint Eastwood in one of his movies, that’s my Dad. A year or so before I was born, he was out back chainsawing a tree when the tree broke, and the chainsaw slipped off and gored his thigh deeply. My father wasted no time, and instead of going to the hospital, he asked my mother for a sewing needle, hydrogen peroxide, whiskey, and thread.

Taking a few shots to numb the pain, he disinfected the wound and needle then proceeded to sew himself back up. Afterward, he went back out and finished chopping up the tree. My mother told me this story once I was old enough to hear it, probably around 14 years old. I couldn’t believe my Dad went back out there and finished up his work while in that much pain. He showed me the scar, and it was pretty gnarly. I later learned he missed his femoral artery by inches and had that happened. I would most likely not be here.” – Mr_Incredible_PhD

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3. This medical professional knows puppies for profit is never okay.

“I used to be a veterinary technician working for an emergency clinic. We had a breeder come in with her very ill and pregnant Boston terrier. The dog was in severe dystocia (meaning she was trying but could not give birth). The doctor palpated her and could tell there were four puppies alive and very ready to come out (one even sucked on her finger). However, the puppies were positioned in such a way that would have made natural birth impossible, so the dog needed a c-section. We informed the owner of this, along with providing an estimate for the surgery.

She broke down the math out loud. Figuring out how much money she would make off the puppies if they all survived. She determined it wasn’t worth it for the surgery since she wouldn’t make a profit. Then, she promptly told us to just put the mother down because she’ll just get a new dog and start over. She was willing to essentially kill five animals because it wasn’t profitable enough for her. Don’t worry. We had her surrender the dog. The mother and puppies made it out okay and were all adopted by lovely families. I still can’t believe that woman decided to do such a terrible thing.” – hebossapplesauce

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2. There were ants everywhere!

“My wife is a hospice nurse. She goes to dying people’s houses and pretty much checks vitals and meds. She surprises me every day with stories of how her patients love to see her. I think it’s because she cares about them, and they see her as their little “angel.” I like to joke around and call her an angel of death. Anyway, one day she came home absolutely mortified. She had a husband and wife on service and went to their house to do her thing. The husband had some type of cancer, and the wife had dementia, I believe.

So, the husband had to take care of the wife. On this visit, when my wife walked through the door, she noticed something was wrong. The wife with dementia was doing her thing, off in her world, but my wife couldn’t find the husband. She went into their bedroom, and the poor guy had ants crawling all over him. He wasn’t dead – he was just too weak to be able to do anything about it. He was fully aware of what was happening in his bed with the ants. She helped him out of bed and proceeded to shower him to remove every ant.” – KuriousOne

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1. Stabbings, surgeries, and self-defense for this medical professional … oh my!

“Hmm… I have a few, though I don’t know if I’d be called a professional. I do work in a hospital. We had one patient come into the ICU whose guts were so swollen that they couldn’t close him up. He was wide open for a week and a half in the ICU. Yes, that means his intestines were on glorious display. I couldn’t eat spaghetti that week without thinking about it. Also, I carried a guy who got stabbed into the ER one day as the girl who brought him drove off in a jiffy. The police arrived a bit later, looking for her – she eventually came back, and they talked to her.

It turns out she was his girlfriend, and she was the one who’d stabbed him. He got arrested. It was deemed that she’d done it in self-defense due to the massive amount of bruising and cigarette burns she had. That one was strange. Then, one week in the ICU, they drained a guy’s lungs because they were filled with fluid. While they were doing that, they found this massive blob. I’m not sure how else to describe it. I only saw the thing in a jar. It was a gelatinous blob (literally – opaque red/orange color, consistency of an egg yolk when you first break the egg- that kind of blob) bigger than my two fists put together.” – Celebreth

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